


and of reddest stolen cherries

by Damkianna



Category: Psmith - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Body Paint, Kissing, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Pining, Ritual Sex, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:40:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28335555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Mike could admit, if only to himself, that he had still not quite believed Psmith, even as Psmith had led him out across the moonlit grounds of Cambridge to the fairy ring down by the riverbank. Fairy rings were only called that because people had once believed certain things about them, that was all. Fungus was fungus.Except Psmith had said it was not. Psmith had said he could open the way, if Mike only held onto him and did not let go. And they had stepped into the fairy ring, and now they were somewhere else.
Relationships: Mike Jackson/Rupert Psmith
Comments: 15
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	and of reddest stolen cherries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aurilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/gifts).



> I just couldn't resist crossing your "just add magic' suggestion with that delightful ritual sex prompt, aurilly—I just hope you like this, and happy Yuletide! :D
> 
> Title borrowed from, of course, "Stolen Child" by WB Yeats.

Mike stood at the edge of the lush green glade, knees weak, and swallowed hard.

He was clutching Psmith's hand too tightly. He knew he was, and yet he could not stop. It seemed as though it was the only thing left that was real, and could be depended upon, when all the rest of the world had gone mad.

He could admit, if only to himself, that he had still not quite believed Psmith, even as Psmith had led him out across the moonlit grounds of Cambridge to the fairy ring down by the riverbank. Fairy rings were only called that because people had once believed certain things about them, that was all. Fungus was fungus.

Except Psmith had said it was not. Psmith had said he could open the way, if Mike only held onto him and did not let go. And they had stepped into the fairy ring, and now they were somewhere else.

* * *

Mike was the one who had pressed.

Psmith had been acting strange, strange and secretive. He was thin enough already; the strain he had begun to wear around the eyes and mouth had sat ill on his narrow face. He had been absent at odd hours, there one moment and gone the next. Mike had caught him leaning out his window once, talking— _talking_ —to a bird. He had been tense, restless, irritable.

And then, at last, Mike had broken beneath the weight of one last straw. Psmith had previously dismissed his questions, dodged them with decreasing grace; changed the subject, and without looking Mike in the eye when he did.

But this time, he had not only deflected or prevaricated. He had lied outright. He had lied to _Mike_ , who would have felt the blow of a pitchfork to the heart less keenly.

Mike had felt himself turn very still; his face had felt hot and his gut had felt cold. He had wanted in a distant sort of way to shout at Psmith, and he could not explain why instead his voice had come out so quiet and hoarse and even.

Psmith had gone pale, listening to him. Pale, and very grave. And then he had told Mike—

Well. He had told Mike something so entirely unexpected that Mike still could not entirely get his head around it.

The general drift of the matter, as Mike understood it, was this: Psmith was different. Psmith belonged to another place, another place that had rules unlike any of those with which Mike was familiar. Rules that were unbreakable, except with the direst of consequences. Rules that were like gravity, like the motion of light and sound, except they were about the turning of the earth, the way things grew and died, the endless circle of time itself.

Psmith had a responsibility toward that turning, that endless circle. It was a duty that was shared, a duty that had not been his to shoulder until now, and would not be again for some years more. The timing was essential, the clock ticking down, and the very turn of the seasons itself depended on it. And it was—that is to say, he had to—

He had said it so matter-of-factly, so blandly, that Mike almost had not understood the words at first: _intercourse; to be specific, Comrade Jackson, the physical rather than the intellectual or conversational, if you will be so generous as to take my meaning without offense._

Mike had gaped at him helplessly for some minutes, thinking nothing at all at first; and then thinking, dim, dazed, but who—?

That had been when it had occurred to him that every time Psmith had vanished, and more and more often lately, he must have been—looking. Asking.

There were others like him. Or at least that was what he had said. There were others like him, but he had implied, in his airy and circuitous manner, as if it mattered not at all, that they did not think much of him.

But as Mike had listened longer, he had begun to understand. Psmith spent more time in this world than—than the other, Mike had managed to think. Almost all of it, really. He spent time with eye-glasses, and cricket, and socialism; he spent time with Mike.

The rest of them did not. The rest of them were hidden away in wild secret places, dreaming, deep in their own mysteries.

They did not know Psmith. And it had cut at Mike suddenly, without warning, to think of it: Psmith refused, again and again, by those who had no understanding of what it was they were offered.

He had not said that to Psmith. It was too vast and delicate a feeling for Mike, who perceived a lack of elocutive talent within himself even under the most ordinary circumstances, to have any hope of putting it to words.

Instead, he had managed only, "Don't suppose it would work with me, then."

Whatever reaction Psmith had been expecting, Mike had intuited that had not been it. Together, with the careful steps of blindfolded men attempting to guide each other along a cliff's edge, they had navigated the resulting conversational precipice. Specifically, could Mike—play the required part, or did anatomy disqualify him? He could, Psmith indicated; it did not matter. And given that he was not like Psmith, but only human—a piece of phrasing which had made Psmith's gaze suddenly intent—it would still work? Mike, Psmith had riposted with prejudice, was not "just" anything, a sentiment expressed with such ardent sincerity it had made Mike's ears hot.

So: Mike would do, then.

And, this conclusion reached and understood by both parties, Psmith had taken him by the hand and led him outside.

Listening to Psmith speak, and holding him in such regard as Mike held him, it had been impossible not to respond in kind—not to treat the matter as truth. All that Mike had said and done had been predicated upon accepting that premise.

And yet, in some part, Mike had not believed it.

But he had followed Psmith to the fairy ring, and he had held on and not let go, and the world had turned itself inside out.

* * *

The glade was just as Psmith had described it. They were surrounded by trees, so huge and old Mike had never seen their like before; the undergrowth was soft, forgiving, thick green moss into which Mike's shoes sank as though it were the pile of a particularly lush carpet.

And there was a fire burning in the middle of it.

There was no wood, no coal. Only the flames, and they burned white, bright and hot.

"Only say the word, Comrade Jackson," said Psmith quietly, "and I shall return you to the riverbank, and we'll never say a word about it. I shan't think less of you; I'll swear it on anything you like."

"No," said Mike. "Thanks awfully, but I'm all right. It's—lovely."

It was. Which did nothing to diminish the impact of Mike's sudden awareness that there was very little room left between him and the act he had agreed to come here to undertake, but there was no point in saying as much to Psmith right now.

"All right," echoed Psmith, and then he looked away, reached for his own collar, and began quite calmly to undo his shirt-buttons.

Mike felt himself flush, and cleared his throat again.

This was not unusual, he told himself, undoing his own cuffs. He and Psmith had been sharing rooms, both officially and unofficially, for years. They had been undressed to varying degrees in front of each other more times than Mike could count. If Mike had perhaps begun to avert his eyes more often than not, increasingly conscious of the tendency of a sharp prickling heat to climb his skin whenever he looked at Psmith in his shirtsleeves too long, well—that could not hope to mean anything, in the face of Psmith depending on him to help turn spring into summer.

They stripped the rest of the way. Mike survived it, mostly by pretending he was alone, until at last he was done and he had no choice but to turn around. When he did, he was faced with the sight of Psmith, bare and lean in the pale flickering firelight—and very, very carefully smoothing down the sleeves of his shirt as he folded it, too lightly for the thick green moss to leave a stain. Helpless fondness tugged Mike's mouth into a smile, and all at once the worst of the heavy sinking knot in his stomach melted away.

Then Psmith was done with the shirt, and stood, and looked at him, and Mike could not quite manage to smile anymore. It was evening in the glade, as it had been evening in the fairy ring by the river next to Cambridge, and in the dimness Psmith's eyes seemed very large and very dark; the firelight cast his face and figure in shifting lines and angles, first one way and then another, so that from one instant to the next he looked almost like a stranger.

Whatever doubt had remained in the back of Mike's mind, it was gone now. Like this, bare and shameless in the dark woods, beside a leaping fire, Psmith looked exactly like what he had said he was: something strange and wild, something that was not made of precisely the same stuff as Mike and cricket and Cambridge. It was an odd thing to think about Psmith—Psmith and his eye-glass, his starched collars and fastidious habits, his papers and study-books. But those, Mike now perceived, were not part of Psmith so much as they were things Psmith had learned, habits he had picked up and tried out and decided he wished to keep up.

"We must leap it," said Psmith.

Mike blinked, and kept his eyes very precisely on Psmith's face, rather than letting them follow the long lines of Psmith's arms and chest and waist anywhere unwise. "The fire, you mean?"

"Yes," said Psmith, and held out his hand.

Mike had never heard him use so few words where more would do. He supposed Psmith must—must, perhaps, be nervous; and he had never seen Psmith terse before because he had never seen Psmith nervous before, which made sense enough.

He took Psmith's hand in his own, and offered Psmith half a smile. And Psmith looked at him in a steady searching way, and then something in his face softened somehow.

"You are better than I deserve, Comrade Jackson," he said quietly.

"Rot," said Mike firmly, and stepped toward the fire. "All right, then. Come on."

They took a bit of a run at it, and leapt. Mike had felt the heat of it from some strides away, and thought for sure it should have burned him to go over it in such a way, but when he came down on the far side, with Psmith's fingers caught between his, his toes were not even tender.

Psmith let out a quick breath, as though they had succeeded at something much more complicated than it had felt to Mike, and then drew Mike around to the side of the fire. "Here," he said, and Mike looked and saw a bowl, heavy beaten silver, that he could have sworn had not been in evidence until the moment Psmith had indicated it.

It was full about halfway with liquid—it looked black in the dimness, until Psmith dipped a finger into it and showed Mike that it was blue.

"Do we ... drink it?" guessed Mike, who had dealt as well as he was able with the fairy ring and the strange glade and the fuelless fire and the nakedness, but felt that a drink that blue was a bit much to ask.

"No," said Psmith, and then he paused, and Mike looked at him and saw his throat work, and felt a sudden fizzing apprehension. "Here," and he took Mike's hand again and brought it to the bowl, dipped it deep enough that it was covered to the wrist, and then drew it out and set it to the center of his bare chest.

Mike felt himself go red; he wanted abruptly to jerk his hand away, because he understood to his bones that there was a very specific danger in leaving it there, and never mind that he was here to do something more dangerous still. But then his breath caught in his throat, and his ears rang, and suddenly he realized dimly that he knew exactly what he was supposed to do.

"I," he said. "Psmith—"

"You know how to do it," said Psmith gently. "We're here for the first time, but we also aren't. You've done this a thousand times, even though you haven't."

"Yes," said Mike, blank, because that was indeed precisely how it felt.

He did know how to do this. He knew just where the lines were supposed to go, across Psmith's fine graceful collarbones and up the column of his throat, looping the canvas of his cheeks; over the balls of his shoulders, down the lengths of his arms and around each wrist, a tail curling into the hollow of each palm; down his chest, across his ribs, his waist, the small of his back; and even his hips, his thighs, his narrow ankles. He knew how long each dip of his fingers into the blue dye would last, and his hands never shook when he reached for the bowl, though he understood now that it was as old as these trees, as old as the river he'd left behind in Cambridge, and belonged to a world that wasn't his.

But his hands _did_ shake when he reached for Psmith. It was a kind of suffering he had never experienced with such intensity, sharp and luminous, to—to have so much of Psmith's skin bared before him, and to touch so much of it, knowing it was permitted only for so singular a purpose. To run his fingers along every curve and arc of Psmith's body, one at a time; and there was a greedy satisfaction in seeing it changed by that touch, even though it was only the dye. To leave a mark on Psmith, even if it was only for a while, even if Mike was suddenly sure it would be gone the moment they stepped back through the fairy ring and came out the other side.

He felt thrilled and ashamed, both at once—terrified and grateful, flushed with heat and shivering with uncertainty. Everywhere he brushed the dye onto Psmith, each whorl and line of the pattern Mike knew without knowing how he knew it, Psmith's skin went tight with goose-flesh as it dried, and Mike could not stop looking at it.

The moment he was finished, he knew it, and let his hand drop. Mike had thought Psmith looked wild and fit for these woods before; painted like this, with twining knots so intricate Mike could not have traced the path of them again if he'd tried for a hundred years, he looked unreal. Mike experienced an urge to shove him down on the moss and kiss him, so sudden and fierce that it was nearly pain.

At least, he thought dizzily, he was finished; it was over.

And then Psmith looked at him, swallowing, and knelt down to put his own hand into the bowl, and Mike realized this was about to get ten times worse.

Psmith began as Mike had, at the center of the chest. By the time Psmith had done one shoulder, Mike despaired silently of maintaining any control whatsoever over his own body. He had tried not to look at—at certain crucial portions of Psmith, though his hands had had to wander very near them; he had discerned some fundamental degree of reaction nonetheless. But he was aware that his own outstripped it, and he wished powerfully to be released and allowed to go squirm his way under a rock somewhere.

By the time Psmith had done Mike's back, Mike's breath was coming mortifyingly fast, and he dimly suspected his knees would give out any moment. And then Psmith returned to the front of him, and went still.

Mike squeezed his eyes shut.

"Mike," said Psmith, very low, and touched him.

Mike gasped, helpless, and pushed up into Psmith's grasp, with such dedication he rose onto tiptoe. His head fell back, and he could not lift it again; he cried out something that did not quite manage to shape itself into Psmith's name.

Psmith gripped him by the hip, hand covered in dye—it was cool and slick, a sharp contrast so close to the heat and dry friction Psmith's other hand was generating, and Mike felt pinned between the two, tense and straining, trying to chase both at once.

"Ssh," murmured Psmith, against the line of Mike's jaw. "I've got you. All right? I've got you." He stroked Mike again, one long firm motion of his palm, and Mike bit his lip and by a profound effort of will kept his feet under him. "You must be patient with me a little longer, Comrade Jackson," and Mike could not tell whether that made it easier or harder than hearing him say "Mike" had, which suggested he was even further gone than he had understood already. "I will proceed with all mercy and efficiency, you have my word. You are a saint—"

"Don't," gasped Mike, trembling. "Don't say such things, Psmith, Psmith—it makes me so—"

"Oh," said Psmith, in a soft wondering tone that suggested this was a revelation unexpected and unlooked-for. "Mike, you—" For the first time, some shadow of real strain entered his voice. "I've only the legs left; as if that's any kindness. 'Succor!' cries Psmith, and silence is his only answer—your _thighs_ —"

Mike gasped for breath and laughed at the same time, he could not help it; after all this madness, this wild impossible night, to hear such a patter of Psmith's sweet familiar nonsense made everything feel almost set upright again. "Go on, then," he managed, "hurry up!"

Psmith hurried with aplomb. Never had he applied himself to a task with such diligence, and never had he been so overwhelmingly rewarded for his labors. By the time he was finished, all the way down at the heels, Mike was shuddering above him, clenching and unclenching his fists, and drawing quick panting breaths, chest heaving.

Psmith stood, and without pause drew Mike into his arms. Everywhere the pattern of the dye on each of them touched, it changed, the flat painted color filling up with light; and then, before Mike's eyes, Psmith changed, too.

Only a bit at a time, but the effect was undeniable. His hair was longer, longer, though Mike had not precisely seen it grow. The shape of his ears, his face, the bones in his jaw and his cheeks, shifted a little, and then a little more. Mike began to feel a kind of pressure in the air, a force that drew him toward Psmith—in sensation, not unlike the force that had already drawn Mike toward Psmith, Mike thought. It was just that now it came from inside Mike, where it had been comfortably lodged for years, and outside him, too.

"Mike," Psmith said, and his voice was sweet and fluting; and then he took Mike's face in his hands and kissed him, and Mike was undone.

Psmith touched him everywhere—everywhere his hands had already been, but this time there was no dye, no pattern to follow; this time he lingered. He kissed Mike deeply, again and again, and stroked him with a strong steady hand, and Mike spent himself once, twice, in what he felt vaguely aware was quicker succession than he could have managed on his own, without a glade and a white shining fire and the strange force that pressed him.

Psmith kissed him a little longer, and then turned him over, and he went easily, without thought or objection. There was nothing to object to: he was in the grip of it now, and he surrendered readily. It was very like the dye, the way his hands had simply known how to move, except that now it was his whole body, and all he had to do was let it.

It was all easy. To lie there, and let Psmith press him open, breach him—to arch into it, and sob, and clutch at the moss beneath him—to feel Psmith's hands at his hips, Psmith working within him—it was easy, and it was beautiful, and it carried him away, again and again: all the heat and helpless blooming bounty of the summer they were making between the two of them, calling to come to them, like to like.

* * *

When it was over, Mike came back to himself, and he knew that it had worked without needing to be told. He was on his side, with Psmith warm and slack and curled up close against his back, and he opened his eyes and saw a thousand flowers.

He blinked, and pushed himself up on one elbow—his thoughts were still slow and heavy with sleep, and he realized a moment too late that Psmith would undoubtedly feel him do it, and wake. But it would have had to happen, and in any case he could not have stopped himself.

His first blurred glance had not been wrong. The glade looked different, now; it was not just the huge old trees, the soft mossy space open beneath them. Flowers had burst up through every inch of it, even under Mike and Psmith where they had been lying—covering the roots of the trees, climbing hopefully up the trunks. Even the ends of the branches, Mike saw, were blooming now, where there had been thick green leaves and tiny closed buds before.

Psmith shifted behind Mike, and then went carefully still.

Mike swallowed, and did not turn—reached down instead and picked a posy, something sweet and pink and ruffled whose name he did not know.

"Guess it worked," he said hoarsely.

"I've no doubt it did," said Psmith, and then, more quietly, "Thank you, Mike."

"Sure," said Mike, and got up.

On the far side of the fairy ring, all was just as it had been.

Mike was, upon reflection, not sure any time had passed at all. The moon was still high; when they forged their way back to Psmith's rooms, the hour had changed, but only enough to match Mike's reckoning of the time it had taken for them to reach the riverbank, and then to return from it, and nothing in between.

As though it had never happened. Mike decided dully he ought to take a lesson from that.

He had followed Psmith, unthinking, but he felt in an instant the gravity of that error. Here they were, trapped, the door closed behind them; even if Mike left immediately, he must—he must say some word of farewell to Psmith, before he could make his escape.

If only he had any hope of deciding reasonably what that word must be.

Psmith surely would not think twice about anything Mike had done after—after the dye had been all painted, after the lines had begun to come alight. Something had come over them then, and Psmith had probably known perfectly well that it would. He could not have understood that Mike would have done it all just the same anyway.

Before that moment, of course, Mike had no excuse. But Psmith had not seemed to mind. So perhaps they were even; perhaps Mike owed no apologies after all. Perhaps he should simply bid Psmith goodnight, and go, and in the morning he would follow the cue of the clock and present himself as though it had never happened—

"Jackson," said Psmith.

Mike felt as if his blood had frozen in his veins. Psmith had rarely, if ever, addressed him in such a fashion; the "Comrade" had been adopted as a mode of address barely two minutes after they had met at Sedleigh, and had never been abandoned. It was only the regular way most everyone spoke to each other at Cambridge, by surname. But coming from Psmith, it could not help but feel like a sudden and deliberate cut.

He swallowed the protest that had risen to his tongue, and made himself meet Psmith's eyes. It was the first time he had done so since the glade. And Psmith—

Psmith did not look angry with him. Just as Mike had thought, there was no trace of the blue dye left on him; he was wholly familiar again. And he looked drawn, and tired, and very grave.

"Jackson," said Psmith again, and this time Mike was better able to withstand the blow—was better able to hear, past the force of it, the careful way Psmith had said it. "You've done me a greater kindness than you can understand; I cannot thank you for it a hundredth as well as you deserve. I only hope it will suffice to promise you that I—" He stopped, throat working. "That I—of course I would never presume to—"

Mike closed his eyes against the sudden powerful swell of relief, and restrained himself from what would have been a powerfully sincere streak of cursing by the skin of his teeth.

"Rot," he said aloud. "I just went along and let you—and you think I'm going to decide you've _presumed_ by calling me 'Comrade'?"

Psmith's chin came up. "I shouldn't care for you to feel as though your frankly astonishing good will and generosity were—"

"Oh, will you shut it!" cried Mike.

He was, at heart, a man of action; he was not suited to heartfelt confessions composed in words.

So he did not try to deliver any. He crossed the room instead, crossed the room and gripped Psmith by a shirt that did not look at all as though it had been taken off and left on the ground for hours, and he drew Psmith to him and kissed him fiercely.

When he was done, he let go, and cleared his throat. "I wanted to," he managed. "I would've. I would again, if you wanted, fairy glade or not. Understand?"

Psmith was staring at him. His mouth had been pale a minute ago, pressed into a tight unhappy line; now it looked soft, gone a little red where Mike had been touching it. Psmith wet it, and kept staring.

"I think," he said unsteadily, after a moment, "perhaps you'd better explain it to me at greater length, Comrade Jackson."

"If you insist," agreed Mike, and took him by the shirt again: twisted his hands into all that clean pressed starch, and made a mark.


End file.
